UOB, OUE REIT Prep $1.9B Sale Campaign for Singapore’s One Raffles Place

Another downtown landmark is set to test Singapore’s rebounding commercial property market, as UOB Group and OUE REIT quietly prepare to put One Raffles Place up for sale for as much as S$2.4 billion ($1.9 billion), market sources confirmed to Mingtiandi on Friday.

The owners are understood to have hired CBRE and JLL to market the complex situated atop Raffles Place MRT station, with the property comprising 860,000 square feet (79,897 square metres) of net lettable area across two office towers and a retail podium. A sale at the indicated price would mark Singapore’s biggest trade of an office property since 2017, when BlackRock sold Tower 2 in the Asia Square complex to a CapitaLand REIT for S$2.1 billion (then $1.5 billion).

The tentative campaign follows an upsurge in Singapore’s commercial real estate market during the fourth quarter of 2025, with deal volume jumping 18 percent year-on-year to $4.5 billion, according to MSCI’s latest Asia Pacific Capital Trends report. The total was the city-state’s third-highest level of investment on record, with growth rising to 94 percent when excluding the local impact of the AirTrunk data centre megadeal in late 2024, MSCI said.

“Surprisingly, domestic investors accounted for most of that amount and the $3.6 billion spent by this group was a record,” the data provider said. “This has happened against the backdrop of a strengthening Singapore dollar, which reached a decade high against the US dollar in late January 2026.”

Long Leaseholds

One Raffles Place features a 63-storey tower built in 1986 and a 38-storey tower completed in 2012, with key office tenants including China Life Insurance and Virgin Active. The elder tower is on an 841-year virtual freehold, while the newer building is on a 99-year leasehold with 56 years remaining. The retail podium is split between the two leaseholds.

The core ownership vehicle, OUB Centre Ltd, holds an 81.5 percent interest in the asset, with the balance historically held by United Overseas Bank. OUE REIT’s 83.33 percent stake in OUB Centre gives the SGX-listed trust an effective 67.95 percent interest in the property.

A transaction of S$2.4 billion would value One Raffles Place at S$2,791 ($2,200) per square foot of net lettable area. The Business Times first reported the expected marketing exercise on Thursday.

News of the potential blockbuster comes as Singapore’s “spectacular” fourth quarter helped boost full-year deal volume in the Lion City by 8 percent to reach $10 billion, MSCI said.

The quarter delivered Asia Pacific’s second-biggest single-asset deal of 2025, as Hongkong Land sold a one-third interest in Tower 3 of the Marina Bay Financial Centre to Keppel REIT for $1.1 billion — marking the largest sale of an office property in Singapore since BlackRock’s Asia Square Tower 2 disposal eight years earlier.

The only deal to exceed this value during the year was Mirae Asset’s $1.4 billion sale of Pangyo Tech One Tower near Seoul to a consortium of KIS and KakaoBank, marking the highest-ever transaction price in the history of South Korea’s office market. 

Targeting Trophies

Singapore’s office investment market continues to gather pace in 2026 as falling interest rates and rising rents whet investor appetite for trophy assets.

Malaysia’s Khazanah Nasional and Singapore’s Temasek put Marina One in Marina Bay up for sale last month, with the state-backed investors seeking up to S$6 billion for the office and retail complex, according to market sources who spoke with Mingtiandi.

Hongkong Land earlier this month announced the launch of its inaugural private fund with assets under management of S$8.2 billion and backing from the Qatar Investment Authority and Dutch pension giant APG. The vehicle is seeded with Hongkong Land’s one-third stakes in Marina Bay Financial Centre Towers 1 and 2 and One Raffles Quay, the developer’s 100 percent interest in One Raffles Link, and QIA’s 100 percent interest Asia Square Tower 1.

In another incubating deal, Robert Kuok’s Allgreen Properties is in exclusive due diligence to buy 78 Shenton Way in Tanjong Pagar from PGIM Real Estate for more than S$600 million, Mingtiandi reported last month, with the closing expected in the coming weeks.